Point-of-sale (“POS”) terminals, such as cash registers, are used in a wide variety of businesses for performing such processes as calculating the total price of a purchase (goods or services) and calculating the amount of change due to a customer. Some POS terminals furthermore track items sold and adjust a database of store inventory accordingly.
A POS terminal may perform a supplementary process in addition to performing the processes listed above. A supplementary process can increase sales, and thereby increase the average profit gained per transaction. One such supplementary process is described in a parent application of the present application, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/920,116, entitled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROCESSING SUPPLEMENTARY PRODUCT SALES AT A POINT-OF-SALE TERMINAL, filed Aug. 26, 1997 and issued as U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,099 on Sep. 12, 2000. Described therein is a supplementary process in which a customer at a POS terminal is offered an “upsell” in exchange for an amount of change due. The POS terminal determines an upsell in dependence on a purchase of the customer, and also determines an upsell price (the amount of change due) based on the purchase. For example, a customer purchasing a first product for $1.74 and tendering $2.00 may be offered a second product in lieu of the $0.26 change due. The upsell price, $0.26, thus depends on the purchase price $1.74.
Another supplementary process is a computer-determined “suggestive sell”. U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,219 describes a system for suggesting items for a customer to purchase from a primary category at conventional item prices. Still another supplementary process is described in a parent application of the present application, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/841,791, entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SELLING SUBSCRIPTIONS TO PERIODICALS IN A RETAIL ENVIRONMENT, filed May 5, 1997 and issued as U.S. Pat. No. 5,926,796 on Jul. 20, 1999. Described therein is a supplementary process in which a customer purchasing an issue of a periodical at a POS terminal is offered the opportunity at that time to purchase a subscription to that periodical.
Such supplementary processes may be performed solely within the POS terminal itself. For example, a cash register may be programmed to calculate an amount of change due, and determine an upsell to offer in exchange for the change due. Alternatively, the supplementary process may be performed with the assistance of a device in communication with the cash register. For example, a remote server computer connected to the cash register via a communications network may determine an upsell to offer in exchange for the change due.
A supplementary process performed at a POS terminal may undesirably slow the rate at which customer transactions are completed. For example, it may take several seconds for a cashier operating a POS terminal to offer a customer an upsell in exchange for an amount of change due, and for the customer to decide whether to accept such an offer. Offering a customer a choice of several upsells in exchange for an amount of change due could impose yet further delays on completing customer transactions.
Such delays may be acceptable under some conditions, yet unduly burdensome under other conditions. For example, during lunch or other times of day, there may be a long line at a POS terminal. It would be inadvisable to add to the wait of each customer in line by performing a supplementary process as well. However, eliminating the supplementary processes may speed the completion of customer transactions, but at the cost of the extra profit derived from such supplementary processes. Accordingly, a need exists for controlling the performance of supplementary processes at POS terminals.